Research Collaborations, Partnerships and Networks

Our research projects, outputs and events are enriched by collaborations with national and international HEI institutions; artists, playwrights, theatre-makers and theatres; cultural organisations; museums and the heritage sector.

The following projects offer examples of our recent research collaborations:

Encountering Disability through Contemporary Dance in Africa

The project was set up to explore how disability has been conceptualised in different African contexts via local views, which particularly impact people living with disabilities because of its via strong magico-religious framing, and in negotiation with past histories of colonialism that have defined belonging in specific ways. It then set out to analyse how integrated dance, as an embodied form and practice, can challenge these views and expand citizenship for people living with physical and intellectual disabilities in Africa.

The research is interdisciplinary - bringing critical disability studies, postcolonial research and contemporary dance into dialogue with one another. Central to this project was the establishment of the African Dance Disability Network (ADDN) to connect integrated dance practitioners, researchers and educators. Together, using action research methodologies, we traced the diversity of the artistic practices on the continent, articulate how dance has a unique capacity both to illuminate the substantial flaws and exclusionary nature of modern concepts of citizenship and offer a path to resolving these issues through this integrated form of dance that allows for adaptive choreographies, and tangentially, consider how African and Europe/ global integrated dance practices compare. We worked closely with Unmute Dance Company and FLATFOOT DANCE Company in South Africa, and three companies and artists in east Africa - Ondiege Matthew and Dance into Space, Kenya, Amuel Solomon and Katim Dance in Kenya and Tebandeke Joseph in Uganda. This involved seeing their work in situ, facilitating exchanges between artists to share skills and approaches to integrated dance and interviewing them to include in our research outputs, so their voices are heard.

Cultures of the Left: Manifestations and Performances

In our times of political confusion – when Leftist agendas and struggles often collapse or become appropriated by the Right – the necessity of recovering the leftist ethos of solidarity, social justice and care for the commons seems more urgent than ever. The project Cultures of the Left: Manifestations and Performances asks: How can the Left ethos be recuperated to address contemporary inequalities of class, cast, gender and race, against the backdrop of the rise of the global Right and mounting environmental crisis? How does one grapple with the complexities of the Left, its theatres and its theatricalities, its modes of activism, its subjects and its subjectivities? This collaboration has enabled a cross-cultural journey in search of the Left. While the physical journey mainly stretches from UK to India and back, on its intellectual journey this project has travelled to many more places -- past and present, rural and urban, from street to stage to the theatre and the home. More voices from different cultural, linguistic, geographical, and disciplinary backgrounds have come on board since.

There is a rich repertoire of activities, public engagements and outputs that this collaboration has been delivering including workshops and colloquia in both UK and India, and curated participations at international conferences (e.g., IFTR, PSI). The project was a special feature of the Karela International Theatre Festival (IFTOK) in 2017. The project hosted the international conference Cultures of the Left in the Age of Right-Wing Populism held at Warwick in Venice (2019) with notable speakers such as Chantal Mouffe and Nivedita Menon. During the COVID-19 pandemic the project has hosted a series of online workshops entitled Cultures of the Left in the Age of Global Pandemic. Its publications include the special issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance, “Performing the Worksites of the Left” (vol. 3/3, 2019) and the edited collection Theatre, Activism, Subjectivity: Searching for the Left in a Fragmented World (MUP, 2024). There are further activities planned to follow the release of the edited collection including the book launch in New Delhi at JNU in early February 2025. The co-editors and projects co-leads Dutt and Jestrovic have been invited to present the book as part of the international conference on Art and Activism in Belgrade (November 2024) and to take part at the prestigious Jaipur Literary Festival in India in January 2025.

The African Women's Playwright Network

The African Women’s Playwright Network developed by Yvette Hutchison has involved collaborations with playwrights like Amy Jepta from the University of Cape Town and JC Niala from Oxford University, the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, The Mothertongue Project, Caucasus of Canadian Playwright Guild, Africa Writes as part of Royal African Society, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry and Oxford Playhouse. These collaborations have fostered staged play readings, symposia/public events, workshops, education projects and publications. This has included the ‘Breaking Boundaries: African Women Writing on the Edges of Race, Gender and Identity’ symposia held at Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town in 2017 that involved 55 women artists and theatre programmers from 8 African countries and the UK and staging excerpts for the launch of Contemporary Plays by African Women (2019), edited by Yvette Hutchison and Amy Jepta.

Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance

The long-standing partnership between Theatre and Performance Studies and the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India continues to foster a number of activities. The UKIERI funded ‘Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance’ (2014-2016), a joint venture between TPS, Politics and International Studies and JNU, explored multidisciplinary approaches to legal, social-cultural and performative aspects of gender construction, gendered violence and abuse that resulted in a conference, a collection Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance edited by Emeritus Professor Janelle Reinelt (Warwick), Bishnuprya Dutt and Sahai Shrinkla (JNU) and a special edition of Lateral